I love poems.  There’s just something amazing and profound that comes from such simplicity.  Perfect words, said succently. However, not everyone shares my enthusiasm and I get that.  When I first started teaching, I followed what I was taught in school–you learn poetry through a poetry unit.  After many years of lackluster participation and ho-hum student-written poems, I had a change of heart. If your students struggle with analyzing poetry, here are three tips to try. 1. Filter poetry in with a unit you are already teaching Now when I teach poetry, I filter it in.  Have a writing lesson working on figurative language and imagery?  Read and discuss a poem first.  They are filled with them.  Teaching a novel and finding evidence to support a theme?  Read and discuss a poem that focuses on the same theme.  (When my students read The Secret Life of Bees, we focused on the theme of social injustice.  I paired that theme with the poems “Harlem” and “I, Too,” by Langston Hughes, and “Alone” by Maya Angelou.  Students made …